LOOKING BACK, TWO DECADES AFTER A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE

Akiki, wrongfully accused of child abuse in 1990s, traveled a long road to acquittal

There are episodes in any city’s history from which those involved will scurry away like a bridal party in a rainstorm. And if certain members of San Diego’s legal establishment of past years had their way, the case of Dale Akiki would be misfiled deep in cobwebbed archives. Our system tormented Akiki as cruelly as could any hooded Elizabethan executioner.

Akiki, the man who endured that abuse, survived and sits in front of me in his modest Mira Mesa condo prepared to talk about those black days.

In 1988, Akiki says, he started attending the large Faith Chapel in Spring Valley. When the church was seeking volunteers, he offered to serve in the nursery school.

According to Akiki’s lead counsel, Kate Coyne, some parents started to protest after about a year, saying his looks were disturbing their children. The head of the Sunday school investigated and said she found no fault with Akiki and said the children loved him.

Coyne says events heated up when a mother started questioning her daughter in an “intensely suggestive manner” until sexual-abuse accusations came forth. The mother then went to the pastor, who called the sheriff’s office. The sheriff and church sent inquiry letters to parents, and then the hysteria started to mushroom, Coyne says, and Akiki was asked to leave the congregation.

For two years, authorities investigated the allegations. In the meantime, Akiki met and married Sharon Bulger, who had also attended the church. His life returned to normal until 21 years ago today. On May 10, 1991, he was arrested while stepping off a city bus on his way home from work. He was carrying a bag of aluminum cans he regularly collected for his wife’s spending money.

A shock to him, he was charged with child abuse and kidnapping. The charges reached 52 counts by the time of the trial.

The result? Akiki found himself facing a lifetime in prison.

This is tough for him to relive, but he does not flinch from the memories. He’s a soft-spoken, devout man of 54 with the moral strength that allowed him to climb some steep hills in his life. He carries a shunt inside his skull to ease migraine pressures on the brain. Even worse, he was born with a rare genetic disorder called Noonan’s syndrome. It caused him to be small and slight, and with a noticeable limp and facial features irregular enough to get startled glances from strangers. Even, perhaps, enough to scare small children.

He is at ease with his debility and appearance. In a strong baritone voice that belies his size, he says, “There’s nothing I can do about it, so I accept it and trust other people to accept me on the type of person I am. I try to be a good friend and kind to all people.”

After the arrest, he was forced to resign his job as a computer assistant for the Navy. He was held without bail for 30 months in the old downtown jail while awaiting trial and during it. Over that time, he was repeatedly denied bail because the court considered him a flight risk. He recalls one judge saying, “Well, if the other judges denied bail, I will, too.”